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Nimble-footed Billy, once a junior ten nis champion, is now a first-class golfer: Last fall brother Henry, getting home late one night, put in a 3 a.m. call to Billy to give him an elder brother's warning. Billy was scheduled to address a dealers' meeting at Detroit that night, but he also wanted to play in the annual amateur-professional golf tournament at White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. "Forget your golf," said Henry, "and be on deck for that meeting." With HF II in the aud ence, Billy made the speech, then grabbed a plane to Goldsboro, N. C., hired a car and drove the remaining 90 miles to the Greenbrier, arriving at 7:30 a.m. He teed off at 10 without any sleep. He shot a 71, and with his pro partner, George Fazio, won first prize. He flew home, wait ed till 3 a.m., then phoned Henry. Said Billy: "I won the tournament." Billy, who also likes to race cars, is go ing to drive Henry Ford's famed old 1902 racer 999 at the Indianapolis Speedway on Memorial Day, and will also drive a Ford there to pace the start of the race.
The brothers live not far from each other in Grosse Point, in spacious, $50,000 homes, but they go their own ways socially, don't see each other much out side their work. They are all camera and movie fans, like to rent commercial films and show them in their homes. The broth ers all depend heavily on the advice of their mother, a determined and steadfast woman, now in her late 50s, who has done most to keep her sons prudently husbanding the family's legacy.
Tough Jobs. While young Henry is the overall boss, his brothers have their separate company roosts to rule. Both were handed tough jobs, and no one has gone out of his way to help them. When Ben was made boss of the Lincoln-Mercury division in 1948, it was in poor shape. It had to assemble its cars in an ancient shop he called "a barn," had no manufacturing facilities, bought all its parts from the other Ford divisions — often at prices Ben thought too high. On top of that, the public didn't care much for the Mercury and Lincoln designs. Says HF II: "We made some bum cars." Just as Henry had to reorganize the whole company, Benson had to shake up his division. He put together his own management team, persuaded the 19-man Ford Administrative Committee (on which he and his brothers sit) to let him modernize his production facilities, got together a crew of designers. The new team liked to work with him. Says Ben: "You can't have people work wholeheartedly with you if you say 'Do it this way.' You've got to ask them their opinion, because often enough you might be in error. In a business as big as this one, no one knows everything."
This year Ben has a car he wants his friends to buy. His Mercury is selling so well that he hopes to make 300,000 this year (v. 178,000 last year), 6% of the entire auto market. His Lincoln is also vastly improved. With the most powerful engine (205 h.p.) in an American car, Lincolns came in one, two, three in Mexico's last border-to-border race.